


Oyuwari

by Fusionmix



Category: Choujin Sentai Jetman, Super Sentai Series
Genre: Doomed Relationship, Gen, M/M, Romantic Face Punching, Unresolved Romantic Tension
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-01
Updated: 2017-10-01
Packaged: 2019-01-07 12:52:05
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,131
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12233223
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Fusionmix/pseuds/Fusionmix
Summary: being toku gatchaman is suffering





	Oyuwari

**Author's Note:**

  * For [borrowedphrases](https://archiveofourown.org/users/borrowedphrases/gifts).



> writing background tracks:
> 
> Lazerhawk - "Another Chance"  
> nervous_testpilot - "Triumph"  
> Kubbi - "Vitamin B12"

 Tendo Ryu remembers the scrape of her nails against his fingers if the pommel of his sword brushes his palms just so. Rie had always kept her nails trimmed short, so slipping away from his grip left no lasting marks. Sometimes he has her in a fireman's grip in his mind, and can imagine the brace and flex that will pull her back to him. This is a good way to think, because otherwise he's struck with the sick sense of confusion that comes with realizing he doesn't remember how they clung to each other from opposite sides of the breach—only that they did, and that he failed.  
And there, he shuts down the reminiscence, letting it grind to a halt in the recollection of Commander Odagiri's fist driving into his gut. He can remember exactly where it landed and how it felt. In memory, it feels cool, like scalding water in the first instant one's hand touches it when the nerves don't know what to do with themselves.

 Yuuki Gai can't recall the exact moment he became a Jetman, only that he hadn't drank enough for a hangover of such magnitude to strike spontaneously in the middle of the day. He knows he nearly toppled the bike and definitely tweaked his ankle when he lurched heavily onto his right leg to support himself, because the dull impact that crackled all the way up his shin has somehow become inextricable from the jagged bolt of light, the flash of searing acrid heat that slapped clear through helmet and skull like it was aiming for his brain stem. The smell of grass and dust and faint watery ozone, the pain in his leg, the annoyance afterward when something hurt no matter the angle he set his foot on the bike's pegs; it's all a big mess of garbage like a bad night spent in a bad bar drinking bad sake. In the memory, his mouth tastes metallic and sharp, like an old coin on the tongue.

 Recalling the Birdonic Wave's details becomes somewhat more urgent when a fingering switch in the heat of the moment, right as he's really getting into the performance, renders a very nice Yanagisawa nothing more than an elaborate brass bookend under his sweating hands. Tasuku, the drummer, hasn't had anything since the shochu they shot straight before the set, so Gai mostly trusts him not to fire off a sarcastic rimshot when the entire band grinds to a halt. There's no time to throw him even a warning glance before a wild-eyed, stoney-faced jackass in a gaudy red stadium jumper claps a hand on his shoulder and they take the ensuing inane conversation to the parking garage.  


 Ryu's breath leaves him too quickly to form mist when Gai punches him, and Gai's knuckles are unscathed despite dishing out a strike that would normally have left his hand purple-blotched with swollen reminders of his sloppy brawler's form. “Don't touch me,” he spits, and is delighted when Ryu picks his ass up off the floor and charges with a ferocity that carries him forward almost before he has time to gather himself fully to his feet.  
Commander Odagiri sighs, loudly. Ryu's eyes are still wide and almost mad—Gai has seen that look before when others rise to his goading—but Ryu's face remains frozen save for an effort-strained curl of the lip when he slugs Gai harder than he's ever been hit before. It doesn't hurt like it should, and while Ryu is clearly angry, even his wild charge feels measured somehow, like the force delivered is amplified by Gai's anticipation and without that there's only hollow obligation.

 It's galling, then, that even at the beck and call of such responsibility, Ryu throws his entire being into what he does. Falling from the grip of a jet that sprouted arms is a poor time to ruminate on this, but it's difficult not to look at the man who's launched himself from the relative safety of a fighter cockpit to join Gai in freefall. Gai thinks about their exchange of blows, how the heft of each blow held no lasting impact, like two mirrored sound waves canceling one another out for a brief moment of breathless contact. We have been made equals, is what runs beneath the current of everything Ryu says to him. It smells like hope, maybe, but the burn of air that rushes past his face and tears at his weightless limbs compels Gai to slam a hand over the bracer Ryu has tossed him.  


  Black Condor falls with style, Red Hawk close behind like a trusting shadow.

 Rokumeikan Kaori is a facade of impulse built over a prefab structure. She is wild and wealthy and beautiful, and resents everything that has made her her, even as she basks in the privilege her status conveys. When she crashes to earth, it is in the most literal sense possible. Your world was such horseshit, is what some nasty part of Gai wants her to take from this. And so is this other one Ryu wants to drag you into. Kaori was not meant to be a warrior, not in the sense Ryu means with his heroic face poised and ready to react as expected, as necessary, while his eyes rove over their faces looking for something—Gai isn't sure what Ryu wants to see, but it isn't him or Kaori or their inescapable ties to inconvenient desire.

 Obligation is a refuge for those who can live up to it. A hero does not become bitter, does not allow himself to be embroiled in personal affairs, does not struggle with his own demons or loss. A hero leaps from a moving aircraft to save a man who does not want his aid, a hero trains as hard as he can to protect those whose wellbeing he has been tasked to defend, a hero leads his team and is not swayed by anything that could compromise his commander's goals, a hero urges the woman who loves him to cast aside her limitations and become a figurehead running on willpower. Gai hates Ryu for it, more than a little, when Kaori pulls herself from Gai's arms and drags herself forward, not towards herself but towards some idealized warrior akin to the persona in which Ryu cloaks himself. He thinks of the churning something in Ryu's eyes, in the set of Ryu's mouth when the hero's mask set about his face weakens ever so slightly.

 Gai spreads himself across a bench and lights a cigarette. The slats are cold through his trousers, the air bites at his cheeks, he imagines what it would feel like to race Ryu in a world where Red Hawk and Black Condor do not exist.

**Author's Note:**

> This is very short, and I apologize. It has been a long time since I've written anything. I am thankful I got a chance to play with the disaster that is Yuuki Gai, and the carefully contained catastrophe Ryu keeps locked down at the back of his brain where he doesn't have to deal with it. I am also thankful that 'romantic face punching' is a pre-existing tag.
> 
> I hope this is to your liking, and also that the AO3 formatting behaves. Tricky thing, that.


End file.
